We went on at 10:00pm, having been well set up by a great set from Monkey Harris - however, the first few numbers were blighted by some horrible sound gremlins! For whatever reason, the microphones made it sound like someone was frying chips in them, the on-stage monitors were giving some horrendous feedback and we had some problems hearing what was going on - very strange considering all had seemed fine about 15 minutes earlier!
Anyway, we persevered and, as ever, everything seemed to fall into place! The organisers had placed the usual plastic "crowd barriers" in front of the stage (a good move as we are renowned for our ability to kick things off!); however, the fact that these barriers were about 10 feet away from the stage created that horrible "shark infested pool" space between us and the audience - never a good situation! So, something had to be done, and the easiest thing seemed to be to ask the crowd to pick up the barriers and move towards us with them! Once this was done, and we could feel the closeness of the hot, sweaty bodies, thing really took off - 24 songs ripped out in an hour and a half (see attached set list), and it was just an incredible feeling to see so many people having such a great time! The fact they they were all drinking for charity was a bonus (and, I'm sure, totally unconnected to the good time they were having!).
We were given 11:45 as our cut-off time (to avoid annoying the neighbours too much) and, I have to say I thought we had timed the set to perfection, as we finished the main set at 11:40, giving us five minutes to deliver the encore that the crowd were salivating for! However, we had not taken account of the fact that the sound man had been told to "pull the plug" at 11:40, so our attempts to launch into a mass crowd-driven version of "Delilah" fell somewhat flat when all the electrics were turned off! A REAL disappointment for us and the punters but, as the saying goes "leave them wanting more", and that was certainly the case last night!
On to Round 2 tonight and, as we want to have the opportunity to enjoy the ambience of the Beer Festival for ourselves, we are kicking the show off at 8:15pm and giving Monkey Harris the chance to try and match what we did last night in the later set! If you have got tickets, make sure you are there in time to see us, as we guarantee that the energy levels will be just as high for the "early shift"! If you haven't got tickets, there may still be some available from the outlets mentioned on the poster (or even on-line). We'd love to see you there.
As an aside, we also attended todays lunch time session at the Beer Fest - as ever, it was a much more laid back event, although the numbers have swelled enormously over the last few years. Made the acquaintance of our new MP (accompanied by Lord Nick of Winterton, of course!) - seems a nice enough guy, and has got the message about making sure he keeps local priorities at the top of his list, irrespective of central party politics - if he does that, he won't go far wrong! By the way, STILL didn't get Nick W to buy me a drink!
Will let you know how tonight goes, in due course!
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